(totally bogus) Haiku for Will

Will, who's birth in sun
created a soul with wit
and grace is 2-6


will and frank

So, evidently I need to incorporate the season into my Haiku for it to be true to Japanese form (hence the reference to sun). And I'm not sure if the number thing is cheating on the syllable rule. Happy birthday!

This is not a cooking blog (or Stepford, here I come!)

Personal goal for the summer: train in the art of cake baking.

I made this goal with another art in mind: cake decorating. Oh, to be able to whip up some intricate, delicate sweet dessert on a moments notice--adorned with flower petals, or some whimsical frosting design! I would surely have a long line of visitors, ready to partake in sugary goodness.

So my training regime is off to a good (mid-summer) start with the launching (for myself) of the Cake of the Week series. Though I meant to bake this week’s cake last week, I was distracted with phone talking (to the brilliant Rachel Klein) and watermelon-lemonade ice pop making. Today I made a spongy orange cake with chocolate-orange-honey glaze in the middle and on top. Coincidentally, it is kosher for Passover.


cake


cake 2

It is definitely not for the orange-hater as it is overwhelmingly orange. I can’t say I like it very much, but I’m sure someone (dad) will when he comes to visit in a few weeks.

In other news, I am trying to figure out concepts such as “zoom” and “flash” on my new digital camera. I took a few pictures of my house for those who have not yet enjoyed EPA to get a feel for my home environment. In said (and shown) home environs, I cleaned up a storm this weekend. I did such things as: vacuuming the corners, bleaching tile grout, cleaning window sills, mopping. Ostensibly because I want to be clean, but really, because my parents are coming.


home


flowers outside my house


where the magic happens...


my yard and container garden (tomatoes and zucchini)


the fauna (and flora) living in my house

Also this great, anti-social/Stepford weekend, I finished watching the entire Firefly series on DVD. It’s a sci-fi western, and it is FANTASTIC. A future where everyone speaks English and Chinese and there’s a union for “companions”? A government bent on experimenting with it’s peoples to make better warriors? That Joss Whedon is on to something…

Not very deep blog about cropped trousers and the deep ocean

Cropped trousers or I’m SO NOT IN

Summer (or winter + 15 degrees in CA) has arrived and with it, my desire to overhaul my closet and buy new pants. A recent trip to the dull Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo CA. brought my attention to a nagging problem in the US of A that we as a culture aren’t addressing: the refusal of cropped pants to die. Lo! I remember when they were first thrust upon us as consumers (or at least when I started to notice). I believe it was the dawning of the new millennium, the year 2000. I remember thinking, “Oh what a nice idea for people who don’t wear shorts. That way they can be cool in the summer too”. How wrong I was with my simplistic utilitarian view. I gave in to the fad and purchased some wrinkle-resistant cotton cropped pants in that black year of fashion and was shocked to discover that there were in fact NO temperature-regulatory benefits. Furthermore, the “pants” only complicate one’s wardrobe because the only appropriate footwear are sandals or going barefoot (which doesn’t work well in Chicago). I immediately turned my bewildered mind to another possibility: could it be that people were purchasing them because they are stylish?

The length of cropped pants varies, I’d say exposing anywhere from 2 inches to a foot of lower leg. For people who aren’t hip enough to wear them correctly (most of the US), they serve no fashion purpose whatsoever except as a status symbol for middle-aged moms. I will agree that young women (max. age 22) can pair them with an off-the-shoulder top and stilettos and look good (ala Ashlee Simpson). But really, how many people do that?

It dawned on me while shopping that in the summer, one is hard pressed to successfully shop for pants that fall to the ankle. So then I started looking around at what my fellow consumers were actually wearing. I did a mini-sociological study and the facts are staggering: 7/10 women randomly looked at (by me) in the MAC store at the Hillsdale shopping center between 1-1:03 pm on June 19, 2005 were wearing cropped pants. 70%!!???

Mail

Two exciting things are arriving/have arrived in the mail this week:

1. New digital camera. Based on the recommendations from my good friends Katy D. and Phaedra U., I bought the Canon Powershot S410. I’ve been tracking it’s progress on UPS, and I think it will become a part of the Pruett-EPA family on June 23. I can’t wait to turn my blog into an amazing photo-blog!
A few things I want to take pictures of:

1. The roses in my yard
2. My favorite tree in Palo Alto
3. Family and friends who will visit this summer
4. Katy and Laurel
5. Rachel’s babies (when I visit in the fall)
6. The ducks at the Baylands preserve

2. The blue planet series. I had to immediately watch my favorite part: the deep ocean. It sill blows my mind in a way that it has never been blown before. Bio-luminescence? Six-gilled sharks? Briny lakes IN THE OCEAN? To see all of those amazing and mostly hideous creatures at the bottom of the ocean with their strange offensive, defensive and mating skills is really life-altering (my favorite are the tube worms that live off of the bacteria that turn hydrogen sulfides into energy—how weird).

Watching the blue planet makes me want to be a marine biologist. Some other things I am not (but sort of wanted to be somewhere along the line):

1. Mermaid
2. St. Pauli girl
3. Vampire with a soul, like Angel, or Star in the lost boys.
4. Burlesque dancer
5. Hair dresser
6. First Lady

Birfday

Today I received three magazines in the mail.

1. Living (by you know who!)
2. The Atlantic Monthly (should read more)
3. Aquarium Fish (new, sudden obsession which sprung forth after watching the deep ocean volume of the blue planet series)

It felt like getting presents, which nicely coincides with my birthday. I'll be 28 tomorrow (June 16, Bloomsday!), which is firmly in the time period known as "the return of Saturn". According to my wonderful soul mate/new-age guru/vegan/raw foods aficionada/genius friend Katy this is a very important time in one's life. Heavy decisions are usually made, and one's life often starts down a new path as if reborn.

Another wonderful friend and soon-to-be-Senegalese-princess (Candice) recently imparted her wisdom about the nature of the soul. Through stale Western philosophers we learn that the search for oneself (soul) is solitary and comes about through self-discovery and intellectual rigor. From African philosophers, however, we learn that the soul can only be born through community and heritage. It is not a solitary journey, but instead is dependent on your interactions within your communities. I like this version of the soul much better.

Brooding hipster boys (bestill my heart!) meditating on Kant and Durkheim could benefit from a nice raucous family dinner, rather than cigarettes and tofu spread alone in their rooms. But I digress....

In celebration of my soul's 28 birthday, I think it's fitting to pay tribute to a few people who've helped shaped it! This list is by no means exhaustive and is in fact dictated only by the availability of pictures conveniently located on the internets.


Katy...



has been instrumental in the development of my sense of humor and desire for creative pursuits. She taught me how to embrace my inner awkward and just let it flow. One of my most salient high school memories is of Katy telling me (after I slid down a hill on our campus) that I should just go all out and FALL rather than trying to regain composure.

Laurel Frank(Jesus)...



is quite possibly the raddest person born onto this planet. It's rare for me to bond so intensely and quickly with someone, and my heart swells at the thought of hours-long conversations (why don't we do those anymore?). My only SF native friend makes me feel whole and good about myself. I want to see jellyfish through her eyes.

Rachel...



is someone who I could never be mad at even if she has forgotten my birthday for the last nine years (she knows the season and that's all that really matters!). She was instrumental in steering my soul down a slightly more confident-academic-self-aware path. Smart as the Dickens she is. Her advent into my life was the best thing that came out of that fancy learnin’ box called college. (That and seeing John Malkovich perform in the Libertine not a mere five feet away from our seats!)

Rose….



is the most just person I know and she also taught me that life isn’t black and white and that there is no truth in morality. She is intense and I admire her.

Jesse…



is a kindred spirit. My soul has only grown in determination and will because of knowing him. I felt comfortable enough around Jesse to openly read the national enquirer on a “science” “learnin’” trip in blatant disregard for the discussion of glacial till. He’s now a professor and knows a lot about teleputers and the like.

Leigh



Ok, so this isn’t “the other Lee”, but it is her boisterous dog, Hudson! Unfortunately her web photo was not a .jpg and therefore not compatible with Hello!. But with my new embracing of communal souls, I believe that Hudson probably shaped her soul and is therefore a good stand-in. Leigh is an amazing listener and good at boiling ideas down into their components. My soul is more rationale because of her. And by watching her I learned a lot about interacting socially and being smoove.

Yay for amazing people and the communal soul!